Probing the Evolutionary History of Comets: An Investigation of the Hypervolatiles CO, CH4, and C2H6 in the Jupiter-family Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner - Université Paris Cité Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue The Astronomical Journal Année : 2020

Probing the Evolutionary History of Comets: An Investigation of the Hypervolatiles CO, CH4, and C2H6 in the Jupiter-family Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner

Nathan X Roth
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Erika L Gibb
Boncho P Bonev
Michael A Disanti
Neil Dello Russo
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Ronald J Vervack
Hideyo Kawakita
Mohammad Saki
Lori M Feaga
Nicolas Fougere
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Anita L Cochran
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Michael Combi
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Yinsi Shou
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Résumé

Understanding the cosmogonic record encoded in the parent volatiles stored in cometary nuclei requires investigating whether evolution (thermal or otherwise) has modified the composition of short-period comets during successive perihelion passages. As the most volatile molecules systematically observed in comets, the abundances of CO, CH 4 , and C 2 H 6 in short-period comets may serve to elucidate the interplay between natal conditions and post-formative evolution in setting present-day composition, yet secure measurements of CO and CH 4 in Jupiterfamily comets (JFCs) are especially sparse. The highly favorable 2018 apparition of JFC 21P/Giacobini-Zinner enabled a sensitive search for these "hypervolatiles" in a prototypical carbon-chain depleted comet. We observed 21P/Giacobini-Zinner with the iSHELL spectrograph at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility on four preperihelion dates, two dates near-perihelion, and one post-perihelion date. We obtained detections of CO, CH 4 , and C 2 H 6 simultaneously with H 2 O on multiple dates. We present rotational temperatures, production rates, and mixing ratios. Combined with previous work, our results may indicate that the hypervolatile coma composition of 21P/ Giacobini-Zinner was variable across apparitions as well as within a particular perihelion passage, yet the spread in these measurements is a relatively small fraction of the variation in each molecule from comet to comet. We discuss the implications of our measured hypervolatile content of 21P/Giacobini-Zinner for the evolution of JFCs, and place our results in the context of findings from the Rosetta mission and ground-based studies of comets.
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Dates et versions

hal-03049713 , version 1 (10-12-2020)

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Nathan X Roth, Erika L Gibb, Boncho P Bonev, Michael A Disanti, Neil Dello Russo, et al.. Probing the Evolutionary History of Comets: An Investigation of the Hypervolatiles CO, CH4, and C2H6 in the Jupiter-family Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. The Astronomical Journal, 2020, 159 (2), pp.42. ⟨10.3847/1538-3881/ab536b⟩. ⟨hal-03049713⟩
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